Out and About

At the time of writing, I am not in the finest of fettles. I am in a word, exhausted. For me weekends are important not because they allow me to not be at work, but because they allow me to do nothing. They let me recharge the leaky, poor quality batteries that sustain my crude and imperfect meat-vessel of a body. This weekend has not seen much time for rest and relaxation. I have been “doing things” and this has left me worse for wear. Saturday saw me heading on a very important quest. I headed out to Reading. My noble and perilous goal? A combination of some early Christmas shopping and buying some sorely needed new jeans for work. A sojourn that I give the slightly inappropriate name of #EpicRockStarAdventure. The jeans were a matter of some urgency. My current work jeans are full of holes, the fly on one pair finally gave up the ghost and died and to cap it all off I am not as thin as I once was. Having to move up to a 32″ waist has given me a new understanding into the mindset of those who constantly bemoan their behemoth like girth when they are in fact slim and trim. It’s all a matter of perspective I suppose. If you’ve spent the vast majority of your life slipping into a 28″ waist you’re going to really notice it when you start to put on a bit of weight and cease to be quite so svelte and hideously skeletal. And then there’s the ever looming spectre of trying to find somewhere to live.

Shh… I’m hunting flats

Thus far in life I have found nothing so stressful, demoralising and strength sapping than house hunting. The sifting out of decent properties from the chaff and the shit. Making sure they’re in the right area, they have the right amenities and white-goods, that they’re in a respectable price bracket, how far is it away from the shops. It’s the sort of thing which reduces me to a gibbering wreck. Even now in one of my more serene and peaceful phases my eyelid continues to twitch like someone’s hooked it up to a car battery. So that was my Sunday, looking at a flat. It was a nice flat. I would very much like to live in it, but then there’s the problems of whether my timeline for moving in meshes with the landlady’s plans, then there’s references, credit checks, deposits, and that all before we reach the truly arduous and soul-destroying task of packing everything up into boxes and actually moving. For some of you this might not seem to bad, a few jaunts back and forth in a car, biff-baff-boff, done. I don’t have a car, my parents live about as far away from me as you can get while still being in the same country. The people I work with are all commuters from less than local areas so their help is not guaranteed either.

So if you were hoping on some deep and insightful wit of sensational writing this week (although why you would is beyond me) you will just have to shoulder your disappointment and live with it.